


Cherry On Top

by dasyatidae



Category: Pod Save America (RPF)
Genre: LA era, M/M, a soft makeout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 18:28:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14455194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dasyatidae/pseuds/dasyatidae
Summary: Lovett and Tommy bake Favs a birthday cake.





	Cherry On Top

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kenopsia (indie)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indie/gifts).



> My original plan was to spend a super long time wringing my hands about whether I've absorbed enough canon info to really write for this fandom; instead, I dove in and produced this overgrown drabble, in honor of kenopsia's birthday! It takes its notes from literally every tommyjon fic I have ravenously consumed over the last few months - in particular, I realized, from grace's excellent 'a perfect waste of time,' where Lovett bakes the lemon cake. <3 Thank you, thank you, dirigibleplumbing, for the beta. 
> 
> Keep it secret, keep it safe. :)

 

“Tommy, I’m pretty sure that needs to be more—before you—well, fuck,” Jon says, as Tommy shakes a half-melted, half-solid glob of butter from the measuring cup into the wide Pyrex bowl, atop a streaky pool of beaten eggs. When the butter hits, the eggs and oil splatter. Jon watches as specks fly and land on Tommy’s worn gray Friend of the Pod sweatshirt. How is it possible, he wonders, momentarily arrested in his rush across the kitchen, that unflappable Tommy, even-keeled, once-trusted-in-the-sit-room Tommy, is completely flustered in his own kitchen, trying to bake a simple cake?

Jon picks up a kitchen towel to—what? Hand to Tommy? Clean him up like he’s a small child? But Tommy yanks the sweatshirt over his head and chucks it across the room. It falls several feet short of the living room couch, to Pundit’s delight. She scrambles up from her bed to pounce on it and bury her nose in its folds.

“Disrobing, sure, good idea,” Jon says, as he sidles up beside Tommy. “More muscles will definitely help.” Tommy’s t-shirt is unfairly tight around his biceps, and Jon’s tempted to poke at him. Usually he’s something of a stickler for personal space, but Tommy’s an evergreen exception. They’ve been knocking elbows a lot lately, he’s noticed.

Tommy grunts with frustration—maybe at the lumpy mess he’s made of the wet ingredients, maybe at Jon’s intrusion. He steps back willingly enough though as Jon bumps him with his hip and pushes his way in front of the mixing bowl. “What,” he snipes. “And you know how to cook now? From all the Blue Apron meals you and your PS4 have been making?”

“Oh, very funny. I’ll have you know my PS4 is a cooking _prodigy_. If I could ever bear for it to leave me, I’d encourage it to apply to Le Cordon Bleu.” He liberates the wooden spoon from Tommy’s death-grip and pokes at the cold pieces of butter with resignation. “Whenever we’re together, it’s all, blah blah artisanal goat cheese, blah blah arugula, watch out for that demon horde over there. It’s gonna take me to Chez Panisse for our five year anniversary, what do you think of that?”

It’s the start of a profoundly stupid bit, but Tommy’s laughing lightly, so…mission accomplished, or something. Jon runs a hand through his hair, surveys the extent of the destruction Tommy’s managed to cause across the various kitchen surfaces in the five minutes he’d been gone, letting Pundit out in the backyard. The brown paper grocery bag is upended, a spill of brightly colored sprinkles and frosting containers tumbling free. There’s a spoon set in the middle of a splash of milk, a dusting of sugar across the polished granite.

The intensity with which Tommy is approaching this task is pretty adorable, actually. When Jon had jokingly proposed a cake-baking competition to Emily last night in their secret birthday planning group text, he’d imagined them making a very different team—Tommy rolling his eyes fondly while Jon threw flour around like the baking genius he totally is, or could be if he tried. Tommy obligingly fetching items from the cupboard’s top shelves while Jon made jokes about his big, tall, handsome body, because he is subtle like that.

Instead, he has a pink-faced Tommy with egg on his shirt, trying to measure his breathing the way he does when he’s digging into a Twitter battle or attempting to fall asleep on a plane, folded obligingly into the middle seat to shield Favs from the window view that Jon always claims.

Jon smushes a piece of the butter with the spoon. “Also, baking and cooking are very different things, Vietor.”

“Baking’s like science, cooking’s like art, I _know_ ,” Tommy sighs, though the edge of frustrated ire has left his voice. He slumps forward, resting his hands on the counter on either side of Jon, kind of trapping him there—and Jon can feel him, warm, against his back. “Okay, Lovett,” he says, breath tickling Jon’s ear. “If you’re such an expert, what do we do next?”

“Mm. Well.” Good question. It’s taking one hundred and ten percent of his brain power to not _lean_ -lean back against Tommy, rub against him cat-like, as if they’re dancing at a club. “I think—if we put the bowl on top of the oven for a bit, the butter’ll soften more. You preheated the oven, right?”

“Uh,” Tommy says.

“Don’t worry.” His phone is across the counter, but he looks down at Tommy’s watch. There’s something about it—the leather band somehow making his large wrist and hand look delicate—which is weirdly erotic. Fuck his brain, what the fuck. He swallows, says, “We’ve got plenty of time.”

Regretfully, he pushes out of the space between Tommy’s arms and turns the oven on, puts the mixing bowl on the back burner where it’ll catch some of the escaping heat, enough to soften the butter without cooking the eggs.

“Okay,” he says. Takes a quick breath in and out to marshall his thoughts. “Dry ingredients.”

“Flour’s up there.”  Tommy points to a cupboard and turns away to begin sorting the other ingredients Jon had picked up from the store.

Jon stares for a moment, then sputters. “Tommy!”

Tommy ignores him. In fact, he picks up one of the containers of frosting and squints at its label, _tsk_ -ing as he pretends to read the nutritional facts. God, he’s such a dork.

“Tommy,” Jon whines.

No response.

Jon huffs and levers himself up onto the counter. The cold stone surface hurts his knees. “This is not how I pictured this going down,” he gripes, fumbling the cabinet open. “You were supposed to be the one getting things off the top shelves you—you giraffe.”

His shirt’s riding up, and he reaches back to tug it down automatically, ineffectually; he can feel Tommy’s gaze on him, burning his exposed skin. He fumbles for the bag of flour and starts to climb down, feeling hot, ridiculous—and beneath those prickly feelings, the omnipresent frustration with his soft, clumsy body. As he’d feared, Tommy is watching him struggle, leaning against the counter with arms crossed, all pretense of distraction gone. He’s watching Jon with a small smile, seeming more collected now. Why is Jon even surprised at this role reversal? Before he can hop off the counter, Tommy’s there, a hand on Jon’s knee, the other plucking away the bag of flour.

“Thanks,” he says, tone mild.

Jon decides it might be safest to stay where he’s at, perched on the counter. He’s kind of got half a boner going, to be honest—again, what the fuck—and it’s gonna be hours till he can analyze the situation for heretofore sublimated Tommy kinks, give his id a stern talking to, and beat off in peace. (Probably not in that order.)

But he can’t stand it, sulking across the room at Tommy’s broad, indifferent shoulders. He relocates to the space next to the cake operation, hops back up on the counter, watches Tommy carefully cut the top off the bag of flour. When Jon opens his phone again to look at the recipe his sister sent him, Tommy looks up expectantly.

“Think it’s your turn to do some of the grunt work, Vietor. Get the measuring spoons.”

“You get them.” Tommy flicks flour at him.

“Hey!”

He does it again.

“Tommy!” Jon sputters. He leans over to get his hand in the flour bag and tosses a handful at Tommy, a white cloud that explodes between them, but he shouldn’t have let himself get off balance, because, in a flash, Tommy’s there, grabbing him. He digs his hands into Jon’s ribs where he knows Jon’s ticklish— _unfair_ —unrelenting until Jon’s doubled over laughing. “Okay, okay!” he gasps. “No fair! Truce!”

Tommy’s breathing hard—fuck, Jon is too—and he lets Jon go slowly, still tensed, as if expecting a counter attack. He stands between Jon’s legs, those large hands lingering on his waist. “What’s the next step?” he asks, finally.

“What?”

He picks Jon’s phone up off the counter, dusts it off, and hands it to him. Right, the cake.

Jon looks at the recipe. Okay, this is normal. Doable. It’s like when they’re driving together—like when they’d driven together on Tommy’s first visits to LA, when Jon was settled but trying to put a brave face on his loneliness, before the podcast and everything. Jon giving directions, Tommy following them with a long-suffering smile, as if he didn’t mind Jon being bossy. Jon might be getting a little worked up, between his ears and in his pants, but Tommy doesn’t need to know that. If Jon’s got a task to focus on, he’ll manage; it’s all part of their dynamic, it’s not a big deal.

Tommy leans toward him. He’s trying to read the instructions, upside down and on Jon’s phone.

“Ugh, you’re such an ogre. Do you have to be in my space?”

“Think you mean oaf.” Tommy leans in further, bumping their foreheads together. Jon squawks. “Unless you mean to call me hideous instead of clumsy.”

“Don’t pretend you have nerd cred. What do you know about ogres?” Jon protests, though Tommy’s right. This is why he usually maintains a no-touching bubble, he thinks. He puts his foot in his mouth enough—as, like, a side effect of his personality—without pheromone confusion adding to the trouble, the electricity of sudden touch muddling his words. Tommy’s hair brushes against his forehead, and Jon’s thoughts spin out, trying to find the bit. Ogres and oafs, something about Jon being the ogre to Tommy and Favs’s stupidly handsome paladins. College Tommy doing shots on a sailboat, Jon hunched over his computer playing WOW. He licks his lips, but the joke doesn’t come.

Then Tommy lets go of his waist, touches the screen of Jon’s phone to scroll further down the recipe. “Do you think the butter’s soft now?” he asks.

The butter has indeed softened enough that Tommy can employ those stellar arm muscles to beat the batter smooth by hand. After insisting that Jon read the next instructions out loud, he makes him add the flour mixture slowly, in thirds, while he stirs. Jon swallows the impulse to be insubordinate because they really do need to finish this cake in time to get ready for their dinner reservation. That’s definitely the reason, not the fact that being Tommy’s Girl Friday is pretty hot, and he wants to enjoy it for a minute before they shift back to more comfortable, bantering territory.

“Go grab the cake pan,” Tommy says.

Jon does, placing it on the counter in front of Tommy and then yanking it away. “Woah, don’t pour it in yet—you gotta put butter in it to keep the cake from sticking.”

“Alright.” Tommy looks at him expectantly.

He feels—well, very handy, greasing the cake pan while Tommy watches him, waiting, stirring the last lumps from the mix. “There. Now you can pour.”

Tommy nods approval. When the cake batter is evenly distributed in the cake pan, Jon sets the empty mixing bowl in the sink, turns back to Tommy.

He’s smiling at Jon—not a photograph smile, but one of the happy little smirks that’s more about a certain brightness in his eyes—and it’s one of those moments where he’s far more handsome than he _should_ be, with his freckles and weird eyebrows, his sandy hair and his tendency to flush as Nantucket red as the horrible shorts he wears. _Not your type_ , Jon used to remind himself. And yet—

Tommy grins. “You’re a mess, Lovett.”

“I’m not a _mess_ ,” Jon protests, waving his hands. “I’m covered in flour, and whose fault is that?”

“You’ve got some—here—” He reaches out, runs his fingers through Jon’s curls. “And here,” he touches Jon’s temple, then his jaw, cups Jon’s face in his stupid large hands.

Jon can feel himself frowning, can feel a prickly ball of irritation building in his chest. God, Tommy is the _worst_ , can he just _stop_. He doesn’t even know what he _does_ to Jon some of the time—most of the time—it’s _ridiculous_.

Tommy lets go of Jon’s face and starts _—_ _what_ _—_ rubbing his head where his hair is shaved close.

“Tommy,” he says, voice higher than he’d intended. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve been wanting to touch this all week.”

“What? My hair?”

“You cut it again,” he murmurs. “It has this shaved part.”

“It’s just an undercut. I—”

“It’s cute.”

“Oh my God, will you _stop_ ,” Jon snaps.

Tommy drops his hands instantly, steps back. “Yeah, sorry.”

For a second, before his face clears of any expression, Jon sees—surprise? Disappointment? His skin is buzzing, and his thoughts aren’t any better—whirring around in his head, a chaotic tumble.

It’s at this moment that the oven beeps, finally up to temperature, ready for the cake.

Jon tries to right himself. He knows from experience there’s no hiding the full circus occurring on his face; he’s not Tommy with his WASP breeding, able to smooth usually expressive features into a benign _fine, thanks, tennis at the beach club?_ mask at will. He turns away and busies himself with placing the cake pan onto the oven’s middle rack. The blast of hot air just serves to discomfit him further. He was already sweating, he thinks, and now his glasses are fogged. “Godspeed,” he tells the cake. He pushes his glasses up on top of his head for a second to rub his eyes.

When he turns around, Tommy is setting a timer on his phone. His thin lips are pressed into a tight line, and his color’s high, a blush creeping up his neck from his collar. They could cut the tension in the room with his fucking cheekbones, Jon thinks.

“We could cut the tension in the room with your fucking cheekbones,” he says. Because fuck it, weaponized flirtation is _his_ schtick. Tommy can back off. He’s not good at it, light enough, with his stupid, earnest face. He’s throwing Jon off. _Stay in your lane, Vietor,_ Jon wants to shout.

Tommy tucks his phone back into his chinos, doesn’t meet Jon’s eyes. He frowns.

Jon takes a breath, tries another tack. “I thought you knew that I was—just messing around. Like when we record ads. I mean, you know that.” Christ, it’s only been _years_ of the same back and forth, the same jokes.

Tommy appears to mull this over, brow knit. Then he says, “Yeah, of course. It’s fine,” a raw edge to the words. They’re words to end the conversation. But Jon still feels mired in the weird swamp of it. He blunders on.

“If you ever feel like I’m coming on too strong, you can just tell me. You don’t have to—to—” He runs out of words, just waves his hands between them. “…Retaliate.”

Tommy grimaces. “Retaliate?” he repeats. He’s got in his hands in his pockets now, shoulders hunched, back stiff, like he wants to shrink to nothing but knows it for a lost cause.

Fine, Jon has to spell it out. “Looking at me, touching me…touching my hair like that.”

“Lovett,” Tommy says, and Christ, Jon hates it when Tommy, like, visibly counts to ten with him, like he’s such a fucking chore. “I thought we were flirting.”

“Yeah, and I’m saying, you don’t have to do that,” John grits out, each word practically punctuated. “You can—if you want to mess with me, you can...fuck with my mic settings during a live show”—okay, no, Jon would kill him—”or, I don’t know, spam my mentions with Game of Thrones spoilers, cover all my possessions in glitter...”

“Shove you in a recycling bin,” Tommy offers tonelessly. Staring at Lovett, like, like—

Jon looks away. “Or I can just—just stop. There. That’s easiest.”

“Alright, I get it. I wouldn’t—I’m not going to push your boundaries. I mean, I didn’t mean to,” he stumbles. “I’m sorry. I thought we were flirting for real. But if you’re not—obviously, I won’t—”

If Jon has to listen to another second of blundering apology, he’s going to scoop Pundit up and run from the room. “Great,” he cuts in, throwing his hands up, “yeah, so neither of us will. Glad that’s settled.”

In the living room, Pundit has nosed Tommy’s sweatshirt into a little nest and is curled atop it. She twitches in her sleep. “Maybe I should just go,” Jon says, hit suddenly by a full weight of misery. The critical voice in his head that’s always hectoring him in social situations is starting up. Usually, Tommy’s presence goes a long way toward muting its roar, but the longer they just stand here, Tommy judging him, the more gleefully it launches into inventorying Jon’s every misstep and flaw.

Tommy clears his throat. “What about the cake?”

“You’re a smart boy. You can figure it out.”

God, he sounds mean, snide. No wonder Tommy greets this with silence. He risks a glance at Tommy, and yeah, Tommy looks pained, fuck. “It’s Favs’s birthday cake,” he says softly. “We were supposed to do it together.”

“Fine. How long do we have?”

Tommy looks at his phone. “Twenty two minutes.”

Jon walks into the living room, throws himself down on the couch. Twenty two minutes. Alright. It’s doable.

Tommy lingers in the kitchen. “Do you want a beer or something?” he asks, after a moment.

“I’m good.”

Eventually, he walks over. Jon tenses, expecting him to take the other half of the couch, but he sits down on the floor and flops back. Pundit perks up immediately, used to Tommy getting on dog level meaning a barrage of head scratches and belly rubs. She looks disconsolately at Jon when Tommy’s gaze stays on the ceiling and the hand that lifts to pat her moves molasses slow. Jon feels guilty, under her baleful gaze. _What’s wrong with Tommy?_ she seems to more accuse than ask. _What did you do to him?_

_Nothing, girl,_ he’d croon at her if they were alone. _I didn’t do anything to your uncle Tommy. He’s doing things to_ me _—making me all mixed up, getting me to feel things._

Jon nudges Tommy’s arm with his foot.

Tommy sighs.

“Tommy, what?”

He makes a noncommittal sound. Jon nudges him with his foot again. “Spit it out.”

“Jon.” Tommy covers his face with his hands. “I shouldn’t have touched you without your permission. I’m sorry.”

Jon shifts on the couch. “You’re good,” he says.

“Did I fuck everything up?”

_Everything._ He opens his mouth to come at Tommy for catastrophizing, then pauses, considers. “You’re really upset about this.”

Tommy nods without moving his hands from his face, which looks funny. He mutters something which is maybe _I am an oaf._

God, maybe Jon overreacted. He’d panicked; he hadn’t meant to make Tommy spiral out. Sitting on the couch in the quiet with Tommy spread out on the floor beside him, the windows cracked so that the curtains move gently, like the inhale and exhale of the house—Jon feels this sense of calm that invokes a handful of precious odd moments from when they lived together in DC. The two of them lounging in the living room late at night, drifting, too tired to move to bed. The critical voice nagging him recedes into white noise, replaced by the sounds of traffic a few streets over, a dog barking at the rumbling of a delivery truck. Jon feels at ease enough to play back their conversation in his head. The earnestness of Tommy’s hands in Jon’s hair, _I thought we were flirting for real._

“Wow. I’m getting this entirely wrong, aren’t I?” he says.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, Tommy, _I’m_ sorry.”

“For what?”

“For how I’m about to crush you”—Jon slides off the couch and gently nudges Pundit out of the way so he can climb on top of Tommy, straddle his waist and lean over, pull his hands away from his face—“with my hideous ogre body.”

“Lovett.” Tommy grimaces. “Don’t say that.”

“Why?” He lets go of Tommy’s wrists, and Tommy’s hands hover, like he’s not sure where to put them.

“Because you’re, uh, stupidly hot. I should have just said that, instead of—”

Jon pulls off his glasses, tosses them onto the couch. Then he lowers himself onto Tommy, biting back a gasp at how immediately good the contact, the press of their bodies, is. Tommy doesn’t hold back. He exhales loudly, swearing. What happens next is so very slow, Jon doesn’t know where the fuck it’s coming from. He’s never really like this, as his last hookup could perhaps attest; that guy had gotten off pawed and pushed against the hallway wall—the closest they got to his bedroom all night. And from what Jon can tell, having seen Tommy PDA over the years, Tommy bending easily to give half-opened mouth kisses to various partners, Tommy isn’t like this either, but—

Instead of kissing Tommy, he kind of—presses his face against Tommy’s, nosing against him like Pundit and Tommy’s stupid sweatshirt, Jesus. He scrunches his eyes shut. They kinda rub their noses together, their lips—so lightly—and Tommy’s not quite kissing, kind of nuzzling his jaw, his neck. There are so many nerve endings in a person’s lips, Jon thinks stupidly, blitzed, and he can feel them all, brushing parted lips across the beginnings of Tommy’s stubble, over Tommy’s lips. It’s like being on fucking molly all of the sudden, the way his skin is tingling beneath Tommy’s touch.

He smells really good too. At that slight touch of their lips, Jon’s heart pounds— _are we going to kiss now?_ —but still no, they don’t, somehow. Tommy’s arms are wrapped around him. He’s stroking Jon’s back, and he’s also got his fingers against the shorn hair at the nape of Jon’s neck, which gives Jon a full body shudder. Tommy rocks them a little—not a rutting together, getting off sort of rocking, but side to side, just a tiny motion that’s about enjoyment of Jon’s weight, like he’s marveling that he has Jon in his arms.

“Alright, what’s going on,” Jon huffs against Tommy’s neck, “you are like drugs, I feel high right now, what the fuck, Vietor—”

Tommy grips and squeezes Jon’s biceps—which is backwards, Jon should be doing that to him. And it would make him self-conscious, how soft his arms are, though he has been working out, but Tommy seems really into it, so—

“I love your body,” Tommy says.

“Alright, calm down. You’re ridiculous.”

“You calm down.”

Okay, fair, except Jon _can’t_ _—_ his pulse is jumping. As if magnetized, one of his hands has found Tommy’s. He hadn’t realized he had curled his fingers into a fist, but Tommy’s fingers circle his wrist, smooth his palm open—and it feels electric, the way he’s kneading Jon’s palm. He’s lighting him up _everywhere_ he touches, it’s crazy.

Jon usually tries not to spend too much time thinking about how big Tommy is—he’s got to work, he’s got a life to live next to the guy, fucking hell. For some reason, more than sprawling out over Tommy or having Tommy tower over him at the counter, Tommy’s large hand curled around his small one, Tommy’s long fingers threaded between his, makes him keenly aware of the fact. Tommy is _huge_.

He groans against Tommy’s neck and is instantly embarrassed by the sound. Tommy’s response is immediate as well; his grip on Jon’s palm becomes vice-tight for a second, his nails dig into Jon’s back. Jon’s got to do something with his mouth. He bites Tommy’s neck. His intention is to be careful, but Tommy swears an encouragement, and Jon’s biting him again, he’s sucking on his skin—chasing a hint of salt—with a recklessness he’d thought at least a decade past. God, he’s going to mark Tommy up, high up on his neck where everyone will see, but he can’t stop.

“Jon, please,” Tommy gasps, turning his face toward Jon, kind of rubbing his cheek against Jon’s curls.

Jon pulls back. “Oh, fuck.” Tommy’s skin is angry red, already a bruise. “I got you good.”

Tommy tugs him down and presses their lips together again, as lightly as before—not quite a kiss, the invitation to a kiss.

“You’re being so careful with me,” Jon says, dazed. It was supposed to be a question—maybe an accusation—but the words come out shaped wrong.

“Sorry,” he breathes. Licks against Jon’s bottom lip.

Jon lets the exploration, the closeness become a kiss—commitment now, if not abandon—the slide of their lips together, Tommy licking into Jon’s mouth, eager.

Jon wants to let himself go. Instead, he releases Tommy’s shoulders reluctantly, tries to sit up. But with Tommy’s arms still wrapped around him, he doesn’t get very far—just awkwardly props himself up on an arm thrown across Tommy’s chest. “You can tell me to fuck off, now,” he declares.

“Lovett—”

“For accusing you of, like, retaliatory flirting—who _says_ that to their—to one of their best friends?”

_“Lovett.”_

“Seriously, Tommy, I’m a monster.”

“You’re not.”

Searching Tommy’s blue eyes, he finds only want and—and fondness. Fuck, Tommy’s _it’s rewarding_ praxis is going to be the death of him yet. Tommy’s not going to let him pull away, and—okay, it’s terrifying, but Jon’s not going to push him.

“Jon—kiss me—please—” Tommy tugs him down again, his fingers in Jon’s hair. It feels really good, all of it.

They kiss and kiss, lying in the patch of sun thrown through the window, dappled fuchsia where the bougainvillea bobs against the glass. Pundit is snoring from where she’s hopped up on the couch, and Tommy’s neighbor plays a top forty station in his garage. It’s warm—the sun, Tommy’s body, perhaps the heat from the oven filling the room. A lament from that Sarah Ruhl play drifts through his mind, as Tommy traces patterns on Jon’s back _—_ _ _e_ ver since I met you, there has been no morning, and no evening, there is only one long afternoon_ _—_ and the character, what, steps into the afternoon like a boat, lets a receding tide pull him away, away. His mornings and evenings, replete with Tommy—Tommy doing the dishes at three AM in their apartment—Tommy too alert and solicitous mornings before they record the pod, teasing Jon, relentless, till he wakes up into his sharpest, most articulate self. He gets it though, he thinks, as Tommy kisses his neck. He’s lived in this long, bright afternoon beside Tommy, so settled together that being settled almost didn’t feel like waiting for this, whatever this is.

A jarring cascade of chimes cuts through the air, makes them both start.

“That’s the timer,” Jon gasps, pulling back. “We should—”

Tommy fumbles around them on the carpet for his phone, though the jangling is clearly coming from the kitchen.

Jon stands up on shaking legs, adjusts himself in his pants. Before he can offer a hand to help him, Tommy sits up easily—of course he does, his fucking abs—and presses a kiss against Jon’s thigh. He stumbles to his feet, pulls Jon to him. The timer repeats and repeats its sequence of tinny notes, and Jon fights the urge to feel Tommy’s hardness through all that straining khaki. The loyal part of him that doesn’t want to ruin Favs’s birthday cake has to win out over the part of him that’s screaming to take advantage of this opportunity, before Tommy wises up to Jon’s inherent unattractiveness. He truly is a saint, he thinks, pulling Tommy toward the kitchen.

Tommy opens the oven door, then lets out a sound of dismay. “Oh my God, our cake sucks. Look at it.”

He uses the towel to place it on top of the stove. Jon stares. It’s…kind of uneven…like one side rose more than the other, somehow? And slightly burnt.

“Oh, well. It’s just a cake,” he says softly.

“It’s Favs’s birthday cake,” Tommy answers, his jaw set. There’s an implied _it has to be perfect_ at the end of that sentence.

“Tommy, it’s okay to be—not good at stupid, little things—like baking a cake. Or, I don’t know, big things too…”  He trails off, getting lost, as Tommy touches his hip—just the tips of his fingers, guitar-callused, against Jon’s hipbone, the soft curve of his side, an excess he usually hates. “I know you’re not used to being terrible at things, but—”

“Jon,” Tommy says in a strangled voice. It feels like he’s speaking against Jon’s hair. “I am terrible at plenty of things. Case in point—conversation we just had.”

Jon thinks about the way Tommy’s eyes crinkled as he looked at Jon, running his fingers over the shaved part of Jon’s head.

“I think it was one of our better conversations,” he says.  


 

That night, Emily’s cake and Jon and Tommy’s cake sit side by side on the Favreus’ dining room table, a Manet next to a little kid’s Crayola scribble. Emily’s cake has two layers and flowers drawn in different colored icings on top. The chocolate frosting on Jon and Tommy’s is melting onto the plate because they put it on before the cake cooled, and then Tommy dumped the entire container of rainbow sprinkles on top when Jon picked an inopportune moment to slide his hands under his shirt.

Seemingly impervious to these aesthetic discrepancies, Favs cuts matching slices from each cake.

“Wow,” he says, beaming at them. “Thanks, guys.”

He shovels a bite of their cake into his mouth and makes an approving noise. Jon watches Tommy’s eyes flicker—a repressed frat urge to give Favs’s pretty face a celebratory shove into the frosting—or maybe something else? Definitely something Jon’ll ask him about later.

Tommy steps up and cuts pieces of cake for Emily, then Jon, grinning at Jon when their fingers brush. God, he’d been like this all dinner, too—touching Jon’s knee under the table, rearranging the small plates so Jon’s favorite things were in reach. He’s solicitous in this happy, easy way, not because he’s _trying_ to be thoughtful—Favs is the obvious intended recipient of the Vietor charm tonight—but because Jon keeps drawing his attention, even when he’s not talking. Which isn’t exactly new, he supposes. It just _feels_ new, today. Like something big.

“Your cake is good,” Emily says thoughtfully, around bites.

Jon swallows. “It was all Tommy,” he attempts. “Showing off his baking prowess while I swanned around looking pretty.”

“Lovett was really helpful,” Tommy fires back. “He got down all the ingredients from the high shelves for me.”

Favs laughs, but Em raises her eyebrows at Jon.

He ducks his head, unsure of what exactly she’s reading into his sudden embarrassment, or the way Tommy leans into him. “Alright, it was totally a team effort,” he says. He takes a big bite of cake to hide the smitten expression on his face, then gasps in outrage as Tommy smushes frosting on his nose.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm vaguely on tumblr [here](http://coffeecupandcorgi.tumblr.com).


End file.
